The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity. In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
Forwarding packets by a packet switching device in a network requires reading information stored in forwarding tables, such as forwarding information retrieved based on a destination address and/or other characteristics of a packet. The latency of retrieving this forwarding information typically affects the forwarding rate of a packet switching device. The size of the tables accessible by the packet switching device affects the number of devices or connections that can be handled by the packet switching device.